Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch collapsed in a Munich beer hall
On this day · 8 November 1923
A pistol shot into the ceiling launched a coup that was over within a day, killing 18 and landing Hitler in prison.
On the night of November 8, 1923, Adolf Hitler burst into the Bürgerbräukeller, a cavernous Munich beer hall, fired a pistol into the ceiling, and announced that a national revolution had begun. Roughly 600 SA stormtroopers had surrounded the building, where Bavaria’s state commissioner was mid-speech.
The plan, loosely modeled on Mussolini’s March on Rome, was to seize Bavaria and then march on Berlin with the war hero General Erich Ludendorff as a figurehead. It unraveled fast. The next morning some 2,000 marchers reached the Feldherrnhalle, where police opened fire. Fourteen Nazis and four officers were killed.
The putsch failed, yet Hitler turned his treason trial into a national stage.
Convicted of high treason, he served barely a year, using the time to dictate Mein Kampf. The lesson he drew was to seek power legally through the ballot box, a route that delivered him the chancellorship a decade later.
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